it reminded americans that what unites us is stronger than what divides us. >> you wrote that -- you wrote on daily beast this is part of the joe plumber-ization. of american politics. what do you mean by that? >> what i mean is that we're elevating folks that become some symbols of prefab populism. we're taking folks, a big agenda gets attached to them, without necessarily any deeper significance. and what i think we do need to -- media or politics, we need to lead, not follow the crowd. in the internet age, have violence or sex and you'll get people's attention. it's tougher to get people to pay attention to solving long-term problems. we need to get people to do that. >> the leader of the country, president obama is getting a lot of attention. you're a crisis management expert. it's september 12th now. what would you advise the president to do? the economy is topic number one. we have elections coming up in a couple of months. should he revisit this topic and the mosque issue right now, past 9/11? >> absolutely. and one of the things that i would have counseled him very early on,